Wednesday, December 14, 2005

BBC's new masterpieces

Do you remember the halcyon days when the BBC used to produce beautiful programs, most of them by or about dead white males? I grew up on a steady diet of Masterpiece Theatre offerings: To Serve Them All My Days, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R, A Town Like Alice, Poldark, and on and on.
At Christmas, based on info I gleaned living in England some twenty-five years ago, the BBC tended to revert to old Hollywood movies (e.g., White Christmas), followed by the Queen's usual nasally delivered speech. Those days are long gone. Peter Glover, writing at Wiresfromthebunker, introduces us to BBC's modern Christmas fare:

The Christmas Day episode of the BBC's Doctor Who is to include an anti-war message that is specifically anti-American in its thrust. A new hour-long programme is to take a swipe at Bush and Blair over their invasion of Iraq. In it a newly-elected British PM is about to have her Christmas ruined by aliens taking over the Earth (much like they have taken over the modern Conservative Party in fact).
Told by an aide that the US president in on the line wanting to take control of the crisis, the PM replies: "He is not my boss and he is certainly not turning this into a war." (excuse me...aliens are taking over the earth, and this does not mean war??). Doctor Who scriptwriter Russell T Davies is unrepentant, "It's Christmas Day, a day of peace. There is absolutely an anti-war message - because that's what I think."

After a stringent reminder of Jesus' own words on just wars (Matthew 10:34), Glover goes on to draw the larger message from the BBC's latest venture into political programming:

If this is not liberal ideological twaddle I do not know what is. But what should anger us most is that this broadcast is being paid for out of public funds. And it shamefully takes a political swipe at one of the few nations that has consistently been willing to shed the blood of its citizens with ours in the cause of freedom. What reveals how enfeebled our national moral spine has become, domestically at least, is that we stand idly by and allow our public broadcasters to besmirch the national character of a nation still more Christian than are we.

Glover's post ends with a real little kicker so, even though I've shared most of it with you here, you'll be cheating yourself if you don't follow this link and see the whole thing.
Hat tip: American Thinker